Look at how he starts his solo, and what he uses as his through-line throughout the solo: he hovers over his B string (maybe E…a single string, dammit) and…what? He *settles in *and steadypicks the string like a hummingbird steadying over a flower. Typical Eddie, it looks incredibly badass. And his thumb kinda freaks me out - too bendy
I don’t know what else to call it. It is its own thing - to be very inside baseball about this, he is rapidly picking over a very light-gauge string, so that requires a very delicate touch. But Eddie isn’t laying off - he’s so into the groove of rapid-picking that string that he can lay back and feel it. He’s grooving over one light gauge string like a motherfucker.
I wish I could articulate the delicacy of this. Guitarists, am I right? Is it fair to say he is using a backhoe to pick up a raw egg and doing so effortlessly?
So guitar folk -
How do you process this? Oh, that’s Eddie being Eddie? Oh, that’s just a good way to set up a long concert solo bit?
Can you do this, or at least attempt it? Do you think it is hard?
How does being able to do something like this fit into your agenda for your playing?
I could tremolo pick just fine back in the day, but I don’t play metal anymore so I have little to no use for this technique. There are a few tricks to make it easier, like using a very thick, rigid pick (1.0mm+), keeping it flat and parallel to the string, and keeping the actual distance of pick movement to a minimum. It takes a good deal of practice and effort, especially to get a steady, even rhythm, but there’s no trickery to it.
I can pick just as fast and cleanly as that, but I can’t chord or slide notes with my left hand while doing so and keep from accidentally touching the open string(s) I’m picking to keep it clean. I’m trying to remember what song that’s from, it’s familiar.
Man, his guitar choice(s) sure have changed. I miss him with the long hair and the heavily modified Kramers.
ETA: Aha, just remembered. That riff is from “Little Guitars” from Diver Down.
Eh, it is fast but not mind blowing fast. (Note, the following is in no way a slam of Eddie. The man kicks ass) And single string speed is, imho, the easiest thing to be fast at. I suspect that I can hit that speed without too much warm up (note, I have a really hard time judging how fast I play, see below for tangent*). Presently my practice routine is scales then arpeggios using a click track that runs from 120 bpm to 210 doing 16th notes. Around 190 my picking hand starts balking a bit. At 200 my fingers tend to want to bypass the strict scale and go their own way.
As far as fast goes for my playing, I just want to be able to play the fasting thing I write cleanly. I write slow stuff and fast stuff, just depends on my mood. Though I never un-anchor my picking hand from the guitar when speed picking. Don’t know how the hell Eddie does that.
For something that is fast and hard, check out this. Picking that fast with a clean tone, crap that is hard. Or this. Paco just fucking shreds.
From looking at Eddie’s elbow, it seems that he’s rotating his whole forearm. So I tried doing that, and after a few minutes, it seemed to come up to speed fairly well. But then, to get the precision necessary to focus on a single string would definitely take some doing, and sure, to float the arm over the body without anchoring makes it all the harder. I’d want a couple hundred hours to work on it, but it seems doable.
And yeah, it’s kind of weird, and kind of inefficient, but it’s just like Eddie to do it in such a unique way. Echoing by-tor here - there’s guys who can play faster or more complex than Eddie, but few can do so as creatively as Eddie.
Yes. Forearm has two bones called radius and ulna. They come together at the elbow and one sort of pivots around the other. Can’t see his picking hand in the video, but it looks like he’s fretting hard to make the bass strings sound. It’s a simulation of the tremolo technique, in which the bass strings are played with the thumb and the trebles with the other fingers. Typically, p-a-m-i in sixteenths (classical) or p-i-a-m-i in quintuplets (flamenco), the thumb is sometimes used on the trebles, and the other fingers don’t have to stay on the same note.
The simulation with a pick sounds like Dick Dale (not a cheap shot at EVH).
He died in 2014, but he remains one of the all-time greats. Here’s a good example from the early 1970s. Tremolo starts at around 0:58:
Yep, it is craft. And that’s kinda my point: I think we all see that this isolated technique is part of stuff we do; whether we focus on it or actively practice it is another thing ;). This is a guy who’s clearly put in his 10,000 hours - not on guitar playing overall; *just on that technique * it’s just interesting to watch a master take a craft skill we all kinda take for granted, groove on it, and base an extended solo around it. Cool to me.
EtFlagon - I guess that’s my other point: Eddie’s doing it jazz style. Crooking his wrist and rotating from the elbow. It engages your whole arm, so is much, much harder to control with any precision vs standard rock/blues straight-wrist technique. Getting hummingbird precise requires so much relaxation and muscle memory.
Lately, I have been playing across a few areas of focus: playing aggressive rhythms with no pick; some funk; jamming with my drummer where I have to lock in and fill in the sound for extended grooves, Jack White style. All of this is requiring that my consistency goes way up, and that I think about it actively while playing, more than gunslinging or adding fills. I’m the bedrock.
As a result, I have seen my ability to do this - it’s called Tremolo Picking? - Eddie/jazz style appear and become fluid, in fits and starts ;). It’s really a Thing, allowing your brain to step back a bit and just let this other part of yourself do it’s Thing that it can do on its own after decades of programming. Weird. But watching Eddie do it the way he does is so in line with how I am coming to it - as a groove thing. Cool.
